Virginia Apgar (1909 - 1974)

Virginia Apgar was a US obstetrical anesthesiologist, best known as the inventor of the Apgar score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth. She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and introduced obstetrical considerations to the established field of neonatology. She was discouraged by the chairman of surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center from continuing her career as a surgeon; instead, he encouraged her to practice anesthesiology because he felt that advancements in anesthesia were needed to further advance surgery and that she had the "energy and ability" to make a significant contribution. Apgar was the first woman to head a specialty division at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (now NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital) and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In conjunction with Dr. Allen Whipple, she started P&S's anesthesia division. She was placed in charge of the division's administrative duties and was also tasked with coordinating the staffing of the division and its work throughout the hospital. Throughout much of the 1940s, she was an administrator, teacher, recruiter, coordinator and practicing physician. source: Wikipedia

In 1952, Apgar made her most significant contribution to medicine. She developed the Apgar score, a system of rating the pulse, respiration, muscle tone, color and reflexes of a newborn baby. Her system of evaluating a newborn's health in the first, critical minutes after birth has saved countless lives and remains in use today. Apgar also founded a subspecialty field, perinatology, which is concerned with fetal health and complicated pregnancies.

At age 50, Apgar started a second career, earning a master's degree in public health. As an executive at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (March of Dimes), she traveled the world, raising awareness about birth defects, and money for medical research. She died in 1974. (source: PBS-Who Made America? ) She traveled with her violin, often playing in amateur chamber quartets wherever she happened to be. Throughout her career, Apgar maintained that "women are liberated from the time they leave the womb" and that being female had not imposed significant limitations on her medical career. She avoided women's organizations and causes, for the most part. Though she sometimes privately expressed her frustration with gender inequalities (especially in the matter of salaries), she worked around these by consistently pushing into new fields where there was room to exercise her considerable energy and abilities. source: Wikipedia

Known for
Inventor of the Apgar score

Child-health lecturer

Find more
Wikipedia

''Is My Baby All Right? A Guide to Birth Defects ''(1972) by Virginia Apgar with Joan Beck

The Virginia Apgar papers (NIH)